Marie-Claire Blais Born: Québec City, Canada; October 5, 1939

Widely considered Québec’s most important living writer, Marie-Claire Blais has written prolifically about the dark side of human experience.

Biography this period, Blais was writing feverishly and taking Marie-Claire Blais was born in a working-class night classes in philosophy and literature at the neighborhood of Québec City, Canada, on Octo- university. It was there that she made two crucial ber 5, 1939. The eldest of five, Blais was a shy and contacts: Professor Jeanne Lapointe, Laval’s first unpopular child, although precociously obsessed female literature professor, who became a men- with writing; she composed her first poem at the tor; and Father Georges-Henri Lévesque, head of age of six and her first novel, about a boy sold to social sciences and well-connected in literary cir- the circus by his father, at fifteen. By high school, cles. When Blais approached the latter for help she was totally devoted to her craft, spending long getting published, he looked over her briefcase of hours at her typewriter and reading widely beyond messy manuscripts and encouraged her to come the prescribed curriculum. Her parents initially back to him with one coherent piece of writing. tolerated her writing, although they judged it a Two weeks later, she returned with the draft of her waste of time that would never earn money; one first novel,La belle bête (lit. “The beautiful beast”; day, however, her mother read a manuscript she trans. Mad Shadows), and Lévesque immediately found in a drawer, and, horrified by its disturbing took it to a publisher. The novel appeared in 1959, contents, threw it into the fire, provoking a major when Blais was twenty years old. It sold 5,000 cop- fight with her daughter. ies in six weeks, earning her immediate national Although her father, Fernand Blais, had a good and international acclaim. job as an electrician at Laval Dairy, he struggled to Based on this success, Blais secured a grant to support his wife and five children. As a result, Blais study in Paris for a year, although she was unhappy was forced, at fifteen, to cut her convent-school abroad and moved to back to Canada in 1960. She education short in order to earn a living. She shared a house in Montréal with several university worked in a shoe factory, then at a series of office students, read widely in German and English, and jobs (nine in the space of a few short years), all continued to write. In 1962, she was discovered by of which she despised. She was repeatedly fired the famous American critic , who because bosses inferred, from the large stack of helped her secure a Guggenheim Fellowship; she manuscripts she toted around, that she was doing held it the following year in Cambridge, Massa- work for other people on their time. A version of chusetts. Her notebooks from this time describe this unhappy period is distilled in the semi-autobi- her feelings of loneliness and isolation from the ographical trilogy The Manuscripts of Pauline Arch- Harvard elite. They were published as a weekly ange. column in the Montréal newspaper Le Devoir and With the independent income from her cleri- later collected in Parcours d’un écrivain: Notes amér- cal work, Blais was able to move out into a room icaines (1993; trans. American Notebooks: A Writer’s near Laval University, which she plastered with Journey, 1996). anguished and macabre faces of children, young From 1964–1969, Blais lived on Cape Cod with men, and women cut out of magazines; these a community of artists and intellectuals that in- monstrous images inspired the suffering, tortured cluded Wilson and his wife, Elena, as well as the characters that populate her early novels. During artist Mary Meigs and her partner, political activist

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Barbara Deming. Blais read and wrote prolifical- mates. Her most famous novel, A Season in the Life ly during this time, publishing her most famous of Emmanuel (1965), describes a year in the life of novel, Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel (A Season the children in a large, poverty-stricken rural fam- in the Life of Emmanuel) in 1965. The novel con- ily. The squalor, illness, maiming, early death, and firmed her as one of Québec’s preeminent writ- sexual predation that befall the various siblings in ers and was awarded the prestigious French Prix this novel are typical of Blais’s depictions of child- Médicis. She spent the next several years traveling hood as unprotected from the violence and bru- among Brittany, Paris, and Montréal with Meigs, tality of society. who had become her lover and would remain a Homosexual identity and community are other lifelong friend. central concerns in Blais’s writing. Although she Since the late 1970s, Blais has been dividing has deliberately resisted being called a ‘lesbian’ her time between Québec and Key West, Florida, writer, preferring a more universal label, she has which, since the 1930s, has been a famous hub dealt directly with lesbian experience in several for writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Ten- of her works, first in a monologue written for the nessee Williams, and Elizabeth Bishop. Blais is feminist theatrical collaboration La nef des sorcières very private and seldom appears at public events, (1976) and then, most famously, in Nights in the but she continues to write prolifically. Her most Underground (1978). Building on the themes ex- recent publication is the seven-part cycle of nov- plored in her monologue, this novel presents a els beginning with Soifs (1995; trans. These Festive more encompassing view of Montréal’s lesbian Nights, 1997). To date, Blais has written over twen- scene, offering a hopeful vision of mutual love ty novels, five plays, two collections of poetry, and and support among women. This utopian ideal is a number of nonfiction works. Her novels have however called into question in subsequent nov- been translated into multiple languages, adapted els, including The Angel of Solitude (1989), set in a into films, and won many prestigious national and lesbian commune, which paints a grim picture of international awards. a world ravaged by AIDS. Her 1995 novel, These Festive Nights, similarly depicts a group of friends Analysis who have assembled to say goodbye to a male Over the course of a career that has spanned six friend who is dying of the same disease. decades, Blais has remained true to an affirma- In spite of the poverty, frustration, and cruel- tion she made in one of her earliest interviews: “I ty that are ubiquitous in Blais’s writing, there are, write about monsters because they are alone and nevertheless, recurring sites of hope and optimism unloved […] I will always write about the ugly or in her work. Although relationships are fraught the bad.” Though differing in style and tone, her and often unsuccessful, Blais depicts the continu- novels are united by their sympathetic portrayals ous striving to forge meaningful connections with of people who are “alone and unloved”; they are others. She also remains committed to the power populated by the oppressed and marginalized of art, with artists of all kinds appearing through- members of society, particularly children, women, out her writing. In particular, her later novels con- and racial and sexual minorities. Gritty and un- tain many descriptions of the transcendent beauty flinching in their depictions of poverty, misery, of music. Blais has also described her recent work and despair, Blais’s works nevertheless contain as a kind of polyphonic music, with each charac- forceful depictions of human connectedness and ter contributing a strain of the melody to build a an abiding faith in the redemptive power of art. massive human chorus. Blais’s early novels focus mainly on the lives of Blais’s style has evolved over the many decades troubled children and adolescents. Her first book, of her writing career. Her earliest novels read al- Mad Shadows (1959), deals with the tortured rela- most as fairy tales, featuring larger-than-life char- tionship between a brother and sister, the former acters and dreamy, non-specific settings.A Season beautiful but stupid, the later intelligent but ugly. in the Life of Emmanuel (1965) marks a shift to a Her follow-up, Tête Blanche (1960), details the con- more realistic mode: its characters are more nu- flicting impulses of a solitary child who oscillates anced, its landscapes more specific. Blais will between cruelty and tenderness towards his class- continue in a realistic mode in The Manuscripts of

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Pauline Archange (1968), which closely describes readers were charmed by the book’s quaintness. the lower-middle class Québec society in which Back home, however, reaction was polarized: Blais herself grew up. At the same time, this novel while some criticized its dismal view of society, oth- will inaugurate a use of a lyricism that will come to ers hailed it as an opening salvo in a cultural revo- characterize her writing. lution that was just beginning to gain momentum. Her most recent novel cycle, comprising the The book takes place in the 1940s–50s, a period seven-part series inaugurated by Soifs (These Festive during which the Catholic Church held tremen- Nights), make use of a highly poetic, stream-of-con- dous power in Québec. The Church not only pro- sciousness narration that drifts in and out of var- moted conservative values (tradition, authority, ious characters’ perspectives. These novels are family) but moreover directly oversaw education, characterized by long sentences spanning multi- healthcare, and social services. Many families, like ple pages, connected by repeated commas and co- the one depicted in A Season in the Life of Emma- ordinating conjunctions. The difficulty of reading nuel, were large, agrarian, and poor. The election this writing replicates the violence of the books’ of a Liberal government in 1960 brought about subject matter, which includes poverty, racism, a period of dramatic modernization and secular- rape, refugees, and other pressing social issues. ization that came to be known as the Révolution At the same time, this technique allows Blais to tranquille (Quiet Revolution). Writers, artists, and connect her characters in time and space and thus intellectuals played a huge role in rejecting the to paint a massive fresco of humanity in all its var- conservative mores of the past and articulating a iation. vision of the future; A Season in the Life of Emmanuel is considered one of the most trenchant social cri- tiques in the literature of this period. Une saison dans la vie The novel opens and closes with the percep- d’Emmanuel (A Season in tions of the newborn baby Emmanuel, the young- est of sixteen children living on a farm with their the Life of Emmanuel) mother, father, and grandmother. Though it is First published: 1965 (translation 1966) winter, Emmanuel’s mother, who is never named, Type of work: Novel returns to work in the fields immediately after giving birth; she and the father barely appear in Satirizing the poverty and conservative values of the story and are largely absent from their chil- Québec in the early twentieth century, the novel dren’s lives. Instead, it is the grandmother, Antoi- spans the first year in the life of Emmanuel, born nette, who raises the children; an imposing figure, into a large, indigent rural family; the narrative Grand-mère Antoinette runs the household with a details his impressions and the grim fates of his frightening and brutal efficiency. many siblings. Although he is the titular character, Emmanuel functions largely as a framing device for the nar- rative, the real protagonist of which is his broth- A Season in the Life of Emmanuel was quickly can- er, Jean-Le Maigre: much of the story is devoted onized as a classic of French Canadian literature to the latter’s exploits, and some of it is even ex- upon its publication in 1965. It was awarded pres- cerpted from his memoirs. Intelligent and rebel- tigious prizes from France and Québec, and estab- lious, though suffering from tuberculosis, Jean-Le lished Marie-Claire Blais as one of the most impor- Maigre chronicles his experimentation with sex tant writers of her generation. and alcohol, which he undertakes with his broth- By contrast with the dreamy, fairy-tale settings er, Fortuné (known as “Number Seven” because of Blais’s earlier novels, the landscape of A Sea- he is the seventh child). He also speculates with son in the Life of Emmanuel is unmistakable: cold, alarming accuracy about the future of his vari- snowy, dominated by the omnipresent Catholic ous siblings, correctly predicting that his sister, Church, and consequently populated by enor- Héloïse, will end up in a brothel. Jean-Le Maigre mous families, this backdrop satirizes life in rural ultimately dies of his illness in the religious boys’ Québec in the early twentieth century. In France, school to which he has been sent against his will.

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This outcome has been read as an allegory for the the socioeconomic spectrum, for example, the fate of the artist in a cruel and ignorant world. refugee Julio, a little boy and the only member of Jean-Le Maigre’s siblings fare only a little bet- his family to have survived the capsizing of their ter: many of them die, some escape to the city to raft. Though differing widely in their experienc- be preyed upon by a lecherous ex-priest (Num- es, all are nevertheless united by the struggle to ber Seven) or maimed in an industrial accident escape suffering and find meaning in a world that (Pomme). Héloïse is kicked out of her convent is often unjust and uncaring. when she is discovered masturbating and eventu- These Festive Nights picks up on many of the ally finds work as a prostitute. Ironically, however, themes previously explored in Blais’s novels, in- she enjoys her vocation and is able to send money cluding illness, violence, and art. Renata, conva- back to her family, who are apparently none the lescing on the island after having lost a lung to wiser about its origins. Moved by her love for the cancer, is tormented by the injustices she witness- departed Jean-Le Maigre, Grand-mère Antoinette es in the law and in society more broadly. She is softens slightly and closes the novel with a hope- haunted by the execution of a black prisoner in ful assertion about the future. Thus, although A Texas and the many other failures of the justice Season in the Life of Emmanuel largely depicts the system, including its unwillingness to punish elev- abject misery and poverty of life during the early en young men acquitted of raping a young girl on twentieth century, its ending can be read as an op- a kibbutz and its remorselessness towards a moth- timistic affirmation of a brighter future. er (perhaps erroneously) sentenced to death for killing her son. The narrative dwells at length on her thoughts about racism, classism, and the sex- Soifs (These Festive ism she has both seen and experienced firsthand. Nights) While the book contains many themes that typify Blais’ work, they are here given renewed urgency First published: 1995 (translation 1997) by the approach of the new millennium: the read- Type of work: Novel er is forced to wonder what kind of world the baby Poetically interleaves the stories of various Vincent and his generation will inherit. interrelated characters on a tropical island. Blais weaves together her characters’ storylines by way of an omniscient stream-of-consciousness narration that moves in and out of their various While Blais has experimented with many dif- perspectives. This technique was pioneered by ferent styles and forms throughout her novels, modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, James These Festive Nights represents a turning point in Joyce, and William Faulkner, who used long phras- her work. It not only inaugurates her longest sus- es and non-standard syntax to communicate their tained project—to date, there are seven books in characters’ inner lives. In These Festive Nights, the the series—but moreover introduces a new po- seamless transition from one individual to anoth- etic style that has come to characterize her later er creates the sense that they are all connected; writing. Blais has likened her writing to polyphonic music, The novel follows a number of loosely-related with each individual singing one role in a giant hu- characters on an island (reminiscent of Key West man chorus. Another hallmark of Blais’s late style, or the Caribbean) on the eve of the new millen- pioneered for the first time inThese Festive Nights, nium. Many have gathered for a three-day party is the use of long sentences, spanning multiple planned to mark the birth of a new baby, Vincent, pages and connected by commas or conjunctions. and the close of the twentieth century; others have This technique creates a breathless effect in the assembled to say goodbye to their friend Jacques, reader, which mirrors the asthmatic breathing of who is dying of AIDS. Orbiting these events is a the baby Vincent, whose struggle to draw breath diverse array of people from varying backgrounds punctuates the story. It also mimics the frenzied and social classes. Some are wealthy and privi- pace of a world rapidly hurtling toward the new leged, like the lawyer Renata and her husband millennium. If Blais’ use of a unifying stream of Claude, a judge. Others occupy the other end of consciousness creates a utopian sense of commu-

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nity, the difficulty of her writing simultaneously evokes the painful side of human experience. Discussion Questions

Summary • How does A Season in the Life of Emmanuel Blais is widely hailed as Québec’s most important satirize life in rural Québec in the early living writer. Her early novels were instrumental twentieth century? in establishing the literary voice of a culture un- • People have likened Blais’ later novels, dergoing a huge social transformation: her de- beginning with These Festive Nights, to the pictions of the poverty and misery of Québec’s work of high modernists, such as Virginia lower classes helped galvanize the Quiet Revolu- Woolf and William Faulkner. What is simi- tion in the 1960s. In the intervening years, Blais lar or different about their styles? has become known for her stylistic audacity and trenchant depictions of human suffering. Though • In many novels, Blais describes dysfunc- differing widely in style and tone, her novels have tional or abusive relationships. What com- repeatedly tackled such topics as child molesta- ment do you think she is making about tion, AIDS, racism, rape, and other social taboos. human connection? Myra Bloom • How do Blais’ novels reflect her claim that “I write about monsters because they are alone and unloved […] I will always write Bibliography about the ugly or the bad”? By the Author novels: La Belle Bête, 1959; trans. Mad Shadows, 1960 Tête Blanche, 1960; trans. Tête Blanche, 1961 Le Jour est noir, 1962; trans. “The Day is Dark” in The Day is Dark and Three Travellers, 1967 Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel, 1965; trans. A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, 1966 L’insoumise, 1966; trans. The Fugitive, 1978 David Sterne, 1967; trans. David Sterne, 1973 Manuscrits de Pauline Archange, 1968; trans. The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange, 1970) Vivre! Vivre! (Tome II des Manuscrits de Pauline Archange), 1969; trans. The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange: Part Two, 1970 Les Apparences (Tome III des Manuscrits de Pauline Archange), 1970; trans. Dürer’s Angel, 1976 Le Loup, 1972; trans. The Wolf, 1974 Un Joualonais, sa Joualonie, 1973; trans. St. Lawrence Blues, 1974 Une liaison parisienne, 1975; trans. A Literary Affair, 1960 Les Nuits de l’Underground, 1978; trans. Nights in the Underground: An Exploration of Love, 1979) Le Sourd dans la ville, 1979; trans. Deaf to the City, 1981 Visions d’Anna; ou le Vertige, 1982; trans. Anna’s World, 1985 Pierre, la guerre du printemps, 1984; trans. Pierre, 1993 L’Ange de la solitude, 1989; trans. The Angel of Solitude, 1993 Soifs, 1995; trans. These Festive Nights, 1997 Dans la foudre et la lumière, 2001; trans. Thunder and Light, 2001 Augustino et le choeur de la destruction, 2005; trans. Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, 2007 Naissance de Rebecca à l’ère des tourments, 2007; trans. Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom, 2009 Mai au bal des prédateurs, 2010; trans. Mai at the Predator’s Ball, 2013 Le jeune homme sans avenir, 2012; trans. Nothing for You Here, Young Man, 2014 Aux jardins des acacias, 2014; trans. The Acacia Gardens, 2016

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poetry: pays voiles, 1963; trans. “Veiled Countries” in Veiled Countries/Lives, 1984 Existences, 1964; “Lives” in Veiled Countries/Lives, 1984 Plays/Radio Drama: L’Exécution, 1968; The Execution, 1976 Fièvre et autres textes dramatiques, 1974 La Nef des sorcières (collaboration), 1976; trans. A Clash of Symbols, 1980 L’Océan, suivi de Murmures, 1977; trans. The Ocean, 1977 Sommeil d’hiver, 1984; trans. Wintersleep, 1998 L’Île, 1989; trans. The Island, 1991 The Collected Radio Drama of Marie-Claire Blais, 2007 nonfiction: les Voyageurs sacrés, 1966; trans. “Three Travellers” in The Day is Dark and Three Travellers, 1967 Parcours d’un écrivain: Notes américaines (1993; trans. American Notebooks: A Writer’s Journey, 1996) Écrire: Des rencontres humaines (2002) About the Author Green, Mary Jean. Marie-Claire Blais. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995. McPherson, Karen. Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2006. Oore, Irène & Oriel C.L. MacLennan. Marie-Claire Blais: An Annotated Bibliography. Toronto: ECW Press, 1998. Ricouart, Janine & Rosanna Dufault, eds. Visions poétiques de Marie-Claire Blais. : Editions Remue- ménage, 2008. Stratford, Philip. Marie-Claire Blais. Toronto: Forum House, 1971.

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